Christa Pike’s attorneys are asking Gov. Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life in prison after she survived two doses of lethal injection drugs during a Wednesday night execution attempt that a leading death penalty expert called unprecedented.
Pike, sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a classmate, was rushed to a hospital after the botched procedure and remained in critical condition Thursday, according to her legal team. Attorney Randy Spivey said at a news conference that her prognosis was still unclear.
“We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” Spivey said. “But we know she is alive right now.”
Gov. Lee halted further efforts to execute Pike and suspended the state’s other scheduled execution for the year. He also ordered a third-party review of what happened, calling the episode “deeply disturbing.”
Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking an immediate stay, arguing she was left in “unnecessary agony” and that forcing her through another execution attempt would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described the failed execution as “completely unprecedented” and also called for clemency.
“Given the experience that Christa Pike went through last night, after a childhood and young adulthood that was full of gender based violence and abuse, it would be irresponsible for state officials to put her through another attempt at execution,” Maher told Fox News Digital. “I really hope that in light of what she’s experienced, that the governor will decide to commute her sentence to a life in prison and not put her through another torturous experience in the execution chamber.”
About 25,000 people had already signed a petition urging Lee to commute Pike’s sentence before the execution attempt. An appeals court had briefly halted the execution early Wednesday, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay hours later, allowing the state to proceed.
Pike, 50, would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years and the 30th person executed nationwide this year, a total driven largely by a sharp rise in executions in Florida since 2025. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, only 18 women have been executed in the country, roughly 1% of all executions.
A pattern of problems
This marks the second botched execution in Tennessee this year. In May, officials called off the execution of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, after they could not find a suitable vein for an IV line.
Tennessee switched to a single-drug protocol using pentobarbital in 2024. Roughly two years before that, the state halted the execution of Oscar Smith after admitting it had failed to properly test its lethal injection drugs; Smith was eventually executed by lethal injection last year.
Maher said Tennessee has a troubled record with executions, but Pike’s case is without precedent.
“This, unfortunately, is not the first time that Tennessee officials have botched an execution. There is really a quite shameful history in Tennessee of executions going wrong, although Christa Pike’s really stands out. There’s never been someone who has received lethal doses of execution drugs and survived until last night,” Maher said.
The Death Penalty Information Center has documented 65 botched executions nationwide in the modern era.
What happened in the chamber
Witnesses said Pike told officials she was at peace before the procedure began, saying, “This is a happy day,” and that she was “ready to be free.” But she remained conscious after the first dose was administered and complained of pain in her arm.
About an hour after the curtains were first raised, officials administered a second dose of pentobarbital. Pike could reportedly still be heard snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone was cut off nearly 30 minutes later.
The underlying case
Pike was 18 when she and her then-17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of fatally stabbing 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer. Because he was a minor, Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. A third defendant, then-18-year-old Shadolla Peterson, who acted as a lookout, testified for the state and avoided the death penalty.
Pike has not disputed her role in the killing, but her supporters have pointed to her history of severe sexual abuse and mental illness. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder after the crime.
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike has said. “It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”
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